Sounds anti-American, doesn’t it? How could I possibly advocate to stop saying one of the most patriotic cornerstones of American culture? The reason this sounds counter-intuitive is because the pledge was designed and worded very carefully to invoke feelings of extreme patriotism while seducing you into blind obedience and subservience to the state. It is astounding just how well this worked because your head is about to explode while screaming “Blasphemy!” right about now, isn’t it? Before you lose your mind let me start by asking you some questions.

Do you actually know the history of the pledge of allegiance?

Do you know the actual intent of the pledge of allegiance?

Do you believe in the United States as the founding fathers created it or do you believe in the current version of it?

Do you believe that socialism was what the founding fathers intended when they created the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and founding the United States?

What is it exactly that you are celebrating every year on July 4th?

Would it surprise you to know that it was a socialist who wrote the pledge of allegiance? His name was Francis Bellamy. He did so because he detested the Jeffersonian ideas of limited government ensconced in our founding principles. His reasons for writing the pledge were based on incorrect assumptions on the notion that the founding fathers created “one nation indivisible”. His incorrect assumption was further reinforced by the writings and actions of Abraham Lincoln and Daniel Webster who Bellamy was influenced by, both of whom got it wrong as well.

Bellamy was a Christian Socialist who preached for the socialist idea of equal distribution of economic resources and against the evils of capitalism from his Boston church pulpit. In 1891 he was forced from that church for doing this. Bellamy worked his entire life to further the socialist agenda in America. He led at least three movement groups with strong socialist leanings or outright socialist agendas. He was the founding vice president of The Society of Christian Socialists and wrote for their newspaper, the Dawn, regularly.That newspaper was run by Edward Bellamy and Frances Willard. Edward Bellamy was Francis’ cousin and the most famous socialist of the time. On top of all that Francis Bellamy was an elitist and a racist. Here are his own words on immigration and universal suffrage:

“A democracy like ours cannot afford to throw itself open to the world where every man is a lawmaker, every dull-witted or fanatical immigrant admitted to our citizenship is a bane to the commonwealth.”

And further:

“Where all classes of society merge insensibly into one another every alien immigrant of inferior race may bring corruption to the stock. There are races more or less akin to our own whom we may admit freely and get nothing but advantage by the infusion of their wholesome blood. But there are other races, which we cannot assimilate without lowering our racial standard, which we should be as sacred to us as the sanctity of our homes.”

Bellamy wrote the pledge in 1892. It is a testament to just how well Lincoln destroyed the principles laid down by the founding fathers when in 1942 Congress adopted the pledge, without any consideration as to how anti-American the pledge really is. The original salute to the flag while reciting the pledge should give you a good idea as to the blind loyalty to the state that Bellamy hoped to inspire in the people. That salute was exactly the same as the Nazi salute. (See the pictures) The fact that the majority of Americans today, cannot conceive of NOT saying the pledge, shows just how well Bellamy’s movement to indoctrinate the American populace worked.

The founding fathers wrote a “federal” constitution at the Philadelphia convention, not a “national” constitution. They designed the United States to be a federated Union of Sovereign States; where the states and the people are sovereign over the federal government except for the few defined powers enumerated in the constitution. They did not design the United States to be “one nation indivisible”. It is well documented by the founding fathers in numerous letters and writings that the American Union was voluntary. Any state had the right to leave when they felt it was in their best interest. That is the complete opposite of indivisible.

To further understand the distinction I am making here consider the following. When the United States won its independence and was recognized on the world stage, King George did not recognize the United States as “one nation” but as thirteen sovereign nations in a union. Here is the excerpt defining this from article one of The Definitive Treaty of Peace 1783:

“His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent states…” (Emphasis at the end is mine)

The founding fathers believed in a separation of powers between the States and the “general” government. Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, that “when government became destructive of” the ends for which it created it was the right of the people to “alter”, “abolish” of “throw off” that government. In other words to “divide” from it. He said this in his first inaugural address.

Had the constitution been proposed to the States on the premise that it created “one nation” that was “indivisible”, not a single State would have ratified it. The entire constitution was premised on the fact that the States retained ultimate sovereignty, that they were the final arbiters of constitutionality, and that they retained the right to “resume all delegated powers” should the new government “become perverted to their injury or oppression”.

The United States was founded on the principles of self-determination, the right to secede from any government that is detrimental to that self-determination, and the freedom and liberty of the people in the individual states to govern themselves as they see fit. The federal government that the founding fathers established was meant to secure and maintain those freedoms and liberties and nothing more. The United States was not founded on the principles of socialism where the state was the final arbiter of all things over the individual. It was founded on principles completely opposite of socialism, that the people are the final arbiter of all things over the government.

We obviously did not fight the cold war and in Vietnam and Korea to further socialism. Do you honestly believe that we send our men and women into harm’s way to fight for socialistic values and principles?

To any Veterans or active duty military reading this. Did you serve, or are you serving, to fight for and defend the values and principles of socialism or the values and principles of The United States that the founding fathers created?

Bellamy’s pledge of allegiance rejects every principle upon which Madison, Hamilton, Jay, Pinckney, Butler, Davie, Iredell, and every other proponent of the constitution sold the new government to the States. Bellamy’s pledge rejects every principle that the United States was founded on. Bellamy was a socialist. His pledge was written from a Socialist view that believes “allegiance” to a central State is “patriotic”. This view is the exact antithesis of the most basic American philosophy of free government and the people and states being sovereign over the federal government. There is nothing “patriotic” about it.

So why do you willingly recite a socialist pledge written and designed to indoctrinate you into believing that the government holds all power over you?

Why do you willingly recite a pledge specifically designed to push socialism onto Americans under the guise of “Patriotism”?

Why are you helping Francis Bellamy achieve his goal of usurping American principles and replacing them with socialist principles?

If you are a true liberty loving and patriotic American, who believes in the United States that the founding fathers created, then you should reject the pledge of allegiance for the anti-American propaganda that it is. Now that you know the origin of, and Bellamy’s intention for, the pledge of allegiance, the most patriotic thing you can do is to stop saying it and encourage others to do the same. If you truly want to “Take back America” or “Restore America” or even “Make America great again”, then I can think of no better place to start then by rejecting the pledge of allegiance for the socialist propaganda that it is.

However, I can understand wanting to pledge to the founding ideals. This is what most people think they are pledging to when they recite the pledge of allegiance. I understand the lure of wanting to be a patriotic American. With that in mind, I have taken the liberty of re-writing the pledge of allegiance to reflect the ideals the founding fathers put forth for all Americans. Specifically, those ideals found in the Declaration of Independence. I call this “The American Pledge”.

“I pledge allegiance to the American ideal of self-determination, and to the inalienable rights for which it stands, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, with opportunity and freedom for all.”

Think about it.

Don’t just take my word for it, here are some links to other material on this very thing. Three great articles, one by Gene Healy at the Cato Institute, one by A.J.Ellis, and one by James Rutledge Roesch at the Abbeville Institute. There is also a six-minute YouTube video.

There are two commodities in the world that are more valuable than any other. These two commodities almost always go together; you can’t have one without the other. They cannot be stolen, at least not by force. The mere act of forcing them from their creator turns them into a vapor that escapes on the wind. They have to be paid for. You can buy them yourself or you can transfer your purchase power to others so that they can acquire them for you. However, transferring your purchase power of these two commodities is an extremely risky transaction. You give over your purchase power to someone else in the hopes that they make the transaction in good faith. This almost never works out for you, because history proves with an almost near-perfect statistical probability that with these two commodities, they will add your power to theirs and leave you with nothing. They accumulate these two commodities for themselves and leave you holding the bag. This is because nearly everyone in the world does not truly understand who creates these commodities and how they do it. No, I am not talking about gold and silver.

You see, freedom and liberty are the most precious commodities in the world. They are far more precious than gold, silver, diamonds or any other precious commodity in this world. They are so precious and rare because the more of freedom and liberty there is in the world, the greater mankind can become. It is only through the freedom and liberty to act that innovation, invention, and creativity can survive and thrive. It was only because of great amounts of freedom and liberty that mankind has been able to leap ahead in technological, scientific, and medical breakthroughs, and in the arts.

Second, only to our very lives, freedom and liberty are the most precious and costly gifts we will ever have the great fortune to possess. Something this valuable requires continuous hard work and sacrifice, because freedom has never been free. If you truly want them, you have to work hard for them.

It is impossible to counterfeit them. It is impossible to steal them into creation. Freedom and liberty are produced solely through the hard work, effort, and sacrifice of individuals. Those individuals create freedom and liberty through a great deal of personal responsibility, a lifelong commitment to self-education, a copious amount of critical thinking, and a willingness to participate far more in the sociopolitical/economic process than just voting. And at times, some of them even sacrifice their very lives to create it.

The creation of all wealth originates with the individual. The individual has all rights to what they create. They have the right to voluntarily exchange what they create with other people for things that they want. Both parties benefit this way.

The same goes for the commodities of freedom and liberty. The individual has the right to exchange the freedom they worked for if someone wishes to purchase it. While these have been energetically traded commodities for all of mankind’s history, they have always been traded unfairly. Those creating them have never been paid what they are truly worth. They have always been ripped off by those buying them. It is an extremely one sided exchange that has more in common with theft than an equal and voluntary trade.

When something so valuable is exchanged at such a ridiculously low price, the buyer has absolutely no concept of the true value of what they just bought. Therefore the buyers will throw away or will give away something that they consider cheap and easily accessible. We are all guilty of this. Something that costs us very little to buy has very little value to us and is easily tossed aside as worthless. The tragedy with this is that even those who create freedom and liberty do not have a complete understanding of what they are creating, its true value and worth, and what it takes to maintain their existence. Because they do not completely understand this they undersell their creation by orders of magnitude.

The true cost of freedom and liberty is astronomically higher than what most people actually pay for it. When this completely lopsided transaction takes place, there still remains an unpaid balance. This unpaid balance can be handled in one of two ways. Almost no one reads the fine print when they make this transaction to find out what those two ways are. They do not realize that they either make daily maintenance payments or pay an overwhelming balloon payment at a later date. Almost no one makes the daily payments and defers the unpaid balance for later. Why work to make daily payments when you can put them off until later?

The more that freedom and liberty are traded without payment toward the remaining balance, the higher the unpaid balance becomes. Just like fiat currency deficit spending; deficit spending freedom and liberty can only be done for so long before the mathematical equation must be balanced. Fiat currencies always hyperinflate to absolute zero because of the purposeful devaluing of a countries currency, I.E. inflation.

The purposeful devaluing of freedom and liberty happens because there are those who desire to steal it from their creators. They work hard every single day at stealing them. This is why freedom and liberty requires a daily maintenance payment because it is being stolen every single day. They steal it and then devalue it by spreading little bits of it around to the masses at no cost as enticement and appeasement and exclaim, “Look at what I have done for you. You are free because of me.” The masses get to enjoy a small amount of freedom and liberty with no concept that their creator was robbed to provide it for them, no idea of their true value and worth, and not a clue about the destructive consequences for not making daily maintenance payments.

When a fiat currency’s deficit balance is due, the cost in economic terms is astronomical. When the balloon payment on freedom and liberty is due, the payment is catastrophic beyond measure because the price needed to pay for freedom and liberty at this point is in blood.

The only way to correct this is for those who create freedom and liberty to stop selling it so cheaply. Full payment should be rendered at the time of the transaction, and the maintenance payments made daily thereafter. This is the only way to stop the violence and bloodshed that a deferred balloon payment demands later down the road.

Less than 3% of mankind chooses to produce freedom and liberty. This is what makes them such rare and valuable commodities and in such high demand. It is the daily labor of those individuals who make the personal choice to produce it. Freedom and liberty are so difficult to produce that only a small amount is created on any given day. Because it takes so much hard work and sacrifice to create such small amounts, the pressure that results from not making daily payments transforms the unpaid balance into a catastrophic balloon payment in human capital.

Because freedom and liberty are such rare and valuable commodities, it requires a level of personal responsibility that most of humanity is either not aware of, or is not capable of. The flip side of the freedom and liberty coin is personal responsibility. It is a side that almost no one ever looks at. That’s because it is dirty, dingy and covered in sweat and blood from all the hard work and sacrifice required, compared to the shiny promise of hope and happiness radiating from the freedom and liberty side.

My wife gets distracted with the “Sparkly” diamond I gave her. Most people also get distracted by the sparkly side of the freedom coin and forget to flip it over and see its true value and worth. It is a criminal negligence and ignorance that has perilous and tragic repercussions. This is the primary reason that mankind has always, and will continue to, chase its tail around and around the Tytler Cycle forever. It is why history repeats itself. It is why in a general sense that some people (those who take the time to look) can foretell the future.

Please, do yourself and everyone else a favor. Flip over that shiny coin and take a long hard look at the dirty side.

The following was written by my friend and mentor Scott Strzelczyk and is hands down the best explanation of rights that I have ever read. I have recommended this article many times to others. Scott published this on his blog on January 23, 2014, and is re-posted here with his permission. He has various writings on the economy, the constitution, philosophy, public policy, etc. You can read his stuff here.

Getting Rights Right

The term “rights” creates misconceptions resulting in innumerable conclusions that are inaccurate, deceptive, and nonsensical. Rights can mean anything, everything, and nothing. Rights can be real and tangible or abstract and ill-defined. Rights can be manipulated and twisted into political and economic terms used by the ruling class to advance ideology and embed into minds the very idea that government is the source of rights, defines rights, and adjudicates rights.

A significant problem with the term rights is the meaning and definition. Any discussion or debate over rights must be predicated upon an agreed upon definition. To do so, let’s start at the beginning.

A self-evident fact is that mankind is antecedent to government. Government is a creation of man and did not precede mankind. Regardless if you believe in a Creator or the origin of life is something other than a Creator we can all agree man existed before government and mankind created governments.

Prior to establishing government mankind lived in a state of nature. There were no constitutions, statutory laws, rules, or regulations that governed people. From the list of aforementioned rights, there are essentially two that apply to mankind in a state of nature; unalienable rights and natural rights. These are different terms for the same rights. All mankind possess these rights and these rights are antecedent to government. Mankind possesses these rights because of their humanity whether endowed by a Creator or not. In all cases, these rights are considered negative rights. And, negative rights don’t denote something bad or evil.

Negative rights are those rights requiring no positive act by another except the recognition that we all possess the same rights. For instance, the right to life, the right to what you produce (property), the right of conscience, the right of association, the right of speech, the right of self-defense, the right to contract with others, etc. I have a right to my life that requires no positive act by anyone else. I have a right to preserve my life by using my physical and intellectual abilities to sustain myself. What I produce as a result of my effort is my property. I have a right to associate with whomever I choose. None of these rights require any positive act from anyone else.

For purposes of this discussion, I’ll use the term natural rights when talking about unalienable, natural, or negative rights.

The Declaration of Independence explicitly recognizes that all men have certain rights antecedent to government. The Declaration elucidates five self-evident truths and the first three describe those natural rights inherent to our humanity. However, in a state of nature, these rights are not necessarily secure. Another person or group of people may steal your property, take your life, or violate your natural rights in some other manner. Your recourse is to adjudicate the violation in a manner that is sufficient to your judgment. Thomas Jefferson used the term rightful liberty to describe the exercise of natural rights. Rightful liberty is the unobstructed action according to your will within limits drawn around the equal rights of others.

The 4th and 5th self-evident truths describe why people leave a state of nature and form a government. The 4th truth says, “That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Jefferson describes implicitly that the only legitimate form of government is that which if founded by the people and which does only what the people have authorized it to do (just powers). Fundamentally, the very idea is that by establishing government mans’ natural rights can be better secured relative to their security in a state of nature.

Arguably, the 5th self-evident truth is the most shunned and ignored today. The 5th truth says, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” Jefferson is explicit in the very premise and conditions under which man is willing to form a government. That is, if the government is violating or destroying the very premise under which it was established – to better secure mans’ natural rights — then the people may always alter it or abolish it altogether.

The 4th and 5th self-evident truths are the right of self-determination and self-governance.

This leaves the remainder of the initial list of rights such as political rights, civil rights, contractual rights, positive rights, etc. The second category we can place rights into is one called contractual rights. Contractual rights are two or more people exercising their natural right of association and right to contract to voluntarily enter into an economic transaction for their mutual benefit. Contractual rights may be formal or informal, written or oral. Contractual rights require a positive action by two or more people. I may ask you to trade me your hat for my gloves. If the exchange occurs we initiated a verbal contract and the terms were mutually agreed upon. The contract was executed after the trade was complete.

More formally, we may enter into a contract with an automobile company to purchase a vehicle and at the same time with a lender to lend us the funds to procure the vehicle. When we sign a contract to borrow $30,000 at a certain interest rate to be repaid over a certain period of time with payments made on a scheduled basis we’ve entered into a contract. The automobile dealer executed their part of the contract by delivering the vehicle to us and the lender and the borrower remain under a contractual obligation until the terms of the contract are met. This is an executory contract. Once the loan is repaid in full the contract is no longer an executory contract but changes to an executed contract.

Health insurance is another example of a contractual right. A person agrees to purchase a health insurance policy that stipulates coverage, co-pays, deductibles, and premium payments and in exchange, a company assumes certain risks on your behalf and they collect a premium for assuming that risk. After deductibles are met, the company pays all or most of your health care expenses.

A positive obligation has been established by both parties. This was entered into voluntarily and without duress, force, or coercion. Contracts generally require positive acts from the parties involved. In the preceding examples, the parties could not force another party into the contract. Each had to act voluntarily and willingly. However, by establishing the contract it imparts specific obligations on each party. When people interact in such a manner it is an extension of their natural rights and a positive act is established – voluntarily. Under no circumstances could a person obligate a lender to provide them with $30,000 to purchase an automobile and believe they were not obliged to repay the loan. In other words, to expect a lender or another person to give you $30,000 for free to purchase an automobile would be a ludicrous expectation. Under no circumstances could a person obligate another person to pay for their health care or health care insurance.

The latter scenario is what Jefferson would call wrongful liberty. As contradistinguished from rightful liberty, wrongful liberty is obstructed against your will within limits drawn around the superior rights of others. To force or coerce someone to lend you $30,000 against their will violates their natural rights. To force or coerce someone to pay for your health care or health insurance violates their natural rights. Therefore, contractual rights are positive acts by two or more people entered into voluntarily without force or coercion.

To summarize natural rights are those rights inherent to our humanity that everyone possesses and requires no positive act by another for us to possess them. A simple example is the so-called “right to health care”. Every person has a right to seek health care because we have a right to associate and to contract with others for a good or service. We have contractual rights when we ask a doctor to perform some service in exchange for a certain payment. The doctor performs the service and we pay the doctor for the service. A contract is executed.

The third category of rights is positive rights.

Positive rights are those rights that impose duties or obligations on another person to provide a good or a service. Positive rights are the antithesis of natural or contractual rights because the former requires force and coercion while the latter is voluntary. Within the framework of natural rights and contractual rights force and coercion would never play a role in peoples’ lives or the exercise of their personal and economic liberty. As mankind establishes government to better secure our natural rights a new actor is now on stage. When government establishes a program or policy that does what cannot be done voluntarily with natural or contractual rights government becomes the facilitator of wrongful liberty.

In, The Law, by Frederic Bastiat he calls positive rights instituted by government legal plunder. Whenever one person, group, company, industry, special interest, etc. uses the power of government through law, rule, regulation, or fiat to take property or income from another under the guise of a positive right is legal plunder. To use the coercive force of government to justify the legality of an act that would otherwise be unlawful had a person done it on their own.

The ends for which government was established are manifestly endangered and perverted by the government’s own acts when it violates our natural rights. The only purpose, the only reason to establish government is to better secure our natural rights. Under the color of law, government commits crimes against us and crimes against some citizens to benefit others.

This behavior is the antithesis of a free society and free people. The founders emphasized freedom and liberty above all else. A recent article titled, “Two Treaties on the Acquisition and Use of Power” by Jude P. Dougherty captured the essence of freedom and liberty conceived and understood by the founding generation contrasted with today’s conception of positive rights. Dougherty wrote:

Traditionally it meant that a man could not be compelled to do anything contrary to reason and conscience [under natural rights and contractual rights]. Under the influence of positivism, “freedom” came to mean that a man could not be compelled to do anything except by law enacted in accordance with some prescribed procedure with sufficient force behind it to compel obedience. From the positivist’s viewpoint what the liberal calls “rights” are merely concessions granted by the state or society. Hallowell concludes that if rights are the product of law, they are not properly rights at all; they are mere concessions to claims that the individual makes and the state recognizes. As such they can be withdrawn if the state deems such withdrawal in the interest of the general welfare. [My words added to original quote.]

Hallowell insists:

There is a great difference between freedom from unjust compulsion and freedom from illegal compulsion. Moreover, when the test of legality is ultimately conceived as the force behind law, freedom from illegal compulsion amounts to no more than freedom to do whatever the state does not forbid. This is a conception of freedom much more congenial to tyranny than to the preservation of the inalienable rights of man.”

Viewed from the perspective of positivism, the rights of man are no longer to be called “natural rights”; they are mere “legal rights.”

The distinction between natural rights and positive rights illustrates how many people view government’s role today. Let’s return to the earlier examples of a person buying an automobile and a person seeking health care or buying health insurance. If government is empowered to determine property rights they have usurped our natural rights and supplanted them with government bestowed legal rights. Suppose government enacts a law that requires some people to pay for the automobiles of others. Suppose government enacts a law that requires some people to pay for the health care or the health insurance of others. What has transpired is government used force and coercion, under the color of law, to decide from whom it will take and to whom it will provide. Societal outcomes become the purpose of government instead of better securing our natural rights. Undoubtedly, when the masses believe the purpose of government is to manage society and the economy all of humanity loses their natural rights to government. All administered by a massive government bureaucracy predicated upon force and coercion. F.A. Hayek captured the essence of this social and political conflict when he wrote, “Whether a man should give away freedom, private initiative, and individual responsibility and surrender to the guardianship of a gigantic apparatus of compulsion and coercion, the socialist state.”

Furthermore, government abridges or denies our natural rights by limiting choices. In free markets, there may be ten choices of light bulbs to choose. If government enacts laws or regulations and limits our choices to two types of light bulbs they have violated our natural rights to contract and to associate. Government allows us to choose from two types of light bulbs but in the process they have forbidden us from choosing from eight others. Government-centric preferences drive policy rather than leaving individuals to pursue their own economic liberty and exercise their own discretion. No government, department, agency, bureaucracy, or person can better decide these things than the individual himself. Moreover, if private businesses behaved similarly it would be collusion or interference with markets. Monopolies are generally considered detrimental to free markets, however, when government monopolizes a market it is deemed acceptable. In the case of health insurance a voluntary, semi-private market was supplanted with a coercive, government directed market. In the context of natural and contractual rights government is using the force of law to violate our rights to extend positive rights to those that otherwise decided not to purchase health insurance or couldn’t afford to purchase health insurance on their own. Government destroys competition, causes malinvestment, destroys liberty, and violates natural and contractual rights.

The term constitutional rights is a colloquialism. The term conveys a sense that the Constitution grants rights to people. That belief is inaccurate and dangerous. Governments do not grant rights. The Bill of Rights imposes restrictions on the federal government. States’ Bills or Declarations of Rights are restrictions on state governments. The danger is conceding the fact that government grants certain rights – natural rights – to mankind. The first and second amendments deal primarily, but not exclusively, with natural rights. The fourth through eight amendments deal primarily with privileges and immunities or what most call civil rights today. The ninth amendment is a catch-all amendment that says there are many other rights not enumerated in the Bill of Rights and those rights are reserved by the people. Those reserved rights are OFF LIMITS to the federal government. That includes the adjudication of those rights. It is also different from the prior eight amendments because it, like the tenth amendment, is an amendment of construction. Lastly, the tenth amendment addresses powers delegated to the federal government under the constitution or those prohibited to the states under the constitution are reserved to the states or the people. The term states rights is also a colloquialism. States do not have rights they have powers. However, we are accustomed to referring to states’ powers as rights.

The founders and framers delineated between rights – natural rights – and what we call civil rights today. Much of the Bill of Rights has nothing to do with natural rights; instead, they are privileges and immunities. The terms privileges and immunities are the terms the founders and framers used for positive acts of government, typically instituted through common law and some through statutory/civil law. For instance, a right to a jury trial is not a natural right it is a privilege using their terms and was a result of common law. Today, that is referred to as a civil right. The right to a trial by jury is a creation of man for interpersonal adjudication. A jury trial doesn’t exist in a state of nature.

Many so-called rights today are simply those defined by law. Political rights and voting rights are for all intents and purposes the same thing. These are rights defined by the government in a representative form of government. Rights confined to specific groups of people are merely distractions from the larger understanding of rights.

Hopefully, when you discuss rights with a family member, a friend, or a neighbor you should understand how the term rights is manipulated to mean anything, everything, and nothing. Remember to define the term if you discuss or debate the issue with others. Remember to distinguish between negative rights (natural, unalienable, etc.) which people possess because of their humanity and positive rights which result from government acts. Remember property rights are a direct extension of each person’s natural right to life and what they produce as a result of their labor to preserve their own life, and that no one else has a rightful claim to your property including the government. Remember government violates your property rights and your right to life whenever they take from you and redistribute your property to someone that has no rightful claim to your property. Remember that the constitution grants no rights but restricts the federal government from violating your natural rights. Remember that contractual rights are based on the free and voluntary acts of two or more people that agree to certain positive acts for their mutual benefit. Remember that the founders and framers used the term privileges and immunities to describe most civil rights and the term civil rights can mean just about anything today. Remember that political rights are a result of the formation of representative government and accordingly, are the result of our acts to create government.

Therefore, the power to create, alter, or abolish government is the right of self-determination that we have as, we the people, possess all political power. Let’s get our Rights right.

I am not writing this series of articles to disparage the great sacrifices made by Americans throughout our history. On the contrary, it is because of their great sacrifices that I feel compelled to write this. Sacrifice and patriotism this profound should be for the right reasons. And it was, when the founding fathers fought for, sacrificed for, and died for the creation of the United States. The reason I am writing this is because their epic sacrifice and patriotism have been hijacked, perverted, turned into propaganda and indoctrination, and has been spoon fed to Americans for the purpose of control, for a very long time. I want to stop the senseless loss of life and wasted sacrifice for a false patriotism. I also want you the reader to know that every single thing I insinuate Americans of being guilty of in this letter, I was just as guilty of for most of my life. It is because others unplugged me from the matrix and allowed me to see the truth that I now want to unplug others. Lana and Lilly Wachowski couldn’t have been more spot on. Not only are most Americans comfortably plugged into the matrix, they are continuously getting distracted by the woman in the red dress…

Part One

Sacrifice, patriotism, and the founding fathers

“Greater love hath no man than this; that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

Let me start with a few questions.

Americans say they love what America and our flag stands for, but can you actually describe what America’s founding principles are? What does America stand for? Do you actually know what it means to be an “American”?

What is it exactly that you are celebrating every year on July 4th?

Do you realize that America is neither “One Nation” nor “Indivisible”?

Do you realize your patriotism has been perverted and is being used against you to further the political power of others?

Do you realize they use our human capital to counter the founding principles and take our freedoms and liberties away from us?

Every living thing, including humans, has one overwhelming dominate drive that supersedes all others, the desire to live. No one wants to die, not normally at least. The motivation to stay alive overrides all other things. The notion of giving one’s life for another, therefore, cannot be overstated. Think about that concept for just a moment. That someone would give their life for another is the greatest act of altruism there can possibly be. It runs so completely counter to our strongest and most hardwired instinct that it takes a supreme amount of will to bypass this instinct. We should be in great awe of those who do this. This ultimate act of selflessness can only be voluntary. A person must want to do such a thing of their own volition, it cannot be forced. A person can, however, be seduced, tricked, or indoctrinated into believing such a sacrifice is for the right reasons, when it is not.

Now, I am not questioning that great sacrifice; I am questioning the morally corrupt abuse of that sacrifice. Because others have such a terrible addiction to power, they will do anything to continue abusing it. This includes throwing all our lives away as cannon fodder to further their addiction. There are those in our government who subvert and debase that great sacrifice for their own personal political ends. They have completely fooled the rest of us into using such a noble thing for such an immoral purpose; their own enrichment of power. We never seem to stop falling for the lie that our sacrifice is for the noble and patriotic reasons of defending our freedoms and liberties.

It is hard to resist the emotional pull of the notion that others have laid down their very lives for our freedoms and liberties. How can we possibly let their sacrifice be in vain? Those in power know exactly how powerful such a notion is to the masses. They use this to bend us to their will. They use this to make it extremely hard for anyone to break ranks. Anyone who dares do so is immediately pounced on by the rest and socially obliterated and ostracized for even daring to question such sacrifice. They have so effectively turned us against each other that we willingly police ourselves to ideals that are not our own and place our own hands into the shackles of slavery. We willingly close and lock the cell door and voluntarily imprison ourselves, all in the name of a false patriotism that we have been indoctrinated into believing. This indoctrination starts when we are very young and never stops. For an example of how we do this please see my blog post covering Decision Making Under Ignorance, which I call “Short Story Decision-Making” here.

When creating the United States, the level of patriotism and sacrifice needed by our founding fathers was so epic, that we are still living in the shadow of that legendary ideal today. Nothing like what they aspired to had ever been tried before in human history. They sacrificed everything, up to and including their very lives, so that we could live with a freedom never before known.

When the United States won its independence and was recognized on the world stage, King George did not recognize the United States as “one nation” but as thirteen sovereign nations in a union. Here is the excerpt defining this from article one of The Definitive Treaty of Peace 1783:

“His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent states…” (Emphasis at the end is mine)

When Americans traveled abroad prior to the 1860’s, they did not call themselves “Americans”, at least not in the way we mean it today. They called themselves Pennsylvanians, Marylanders, New Yorkers, Georgians, Virginians, etc. When the thirteen colonies won their independence, they went from being colonies of the English Crown to being their own sovereign countries. The rub here that makes this a difficult thing to wrap our head around, is that the word “State” had a slightly different meaning in the world at the time of our founding than what Americans typically associate with it today. Here is an excerpt from Brion McClanahan’s article “Rethinking the Declaration of Independence” originally published July 4th, 2010 exemplifying this.

“Jefferson made a conscious decision to choose the word State. A State, in the 18th century, was a sovereign political entity. In the same document, Jefferson called Great Britain a “State.” Thus, Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, or any other American State, were equal to the mother country. They were not shires, parishes, counties, or provinces subservient to a “united States” government.”

The thirteen original “countries” I.E. States, banded together in a federated union for mutual benefit and protection, much like the European Union is today. Americans at that time would be sure that whoever they spoke with understood which country in the American Union they were from. You can understand this concept by answering one simple question. Have you ever heard anyone from any of the countries in the European Union label themselves as a “European” instead of a German, or Frenchman, or Belgian, etc? I bet you haven’t. They are a citizen of France, or Germany, or Belgium. They are not a citizen of the European Union.

This is a distinction that is very important, so please remember it. Our founding fathers did not create “one nation…indivisible”. In fact, they abhorred such a thing. That was the very thing they just fought to separate themselves from. The founding generations fled Europe to America precisely to escape that form of government. This is a critical distinction that the majority of Americans today are ignorant of but has a profound impact on a person’s perspective. This is another example of Decision Making Under Ignorance that I mentioned above.

This then is the very founding principles of the United States; the right to self-determination and the right to secede from any form of government or group of people who are detrimental to that self-determination. The founding principles of the United States enshrine the immutable and inalienable right to life. There is no greater right.

Unfortunately, the America that the founding fathers created, and we still worship to this very day, only lived for a little over seventy years. That America, where distinctly different groups of people who believed in different forms of governance, who joined together and worked together for mutual benefit, no longer exists today. It was murdered by progressives who believed that they had the right to force all the other states to be governed in only one way, their way. This isn’t freedom. This isn’t liberty for all. This isn’t how the founding fathers designed the United States. This isn’t what America stands for.

One of the tools the progressives have used to tremendous effect in indoctrinating Americans into a near fanatical loyalty to their form of government is the pledge of allegiance. A socialist named Francis Bellamy wrote the pledge of allegiance. He did so because he detested the Jeffersonian ideas of limited government ensconced in our founding principles. His reasons for writing the pledge were based on incorrect assumptions that the founding fathers created “one nation…indivisible”. Tragically, or maybe by design, Congress never even considered the socialist origin of the pledge when they officially adopted it in 1942. The tragedy being it has become an untouchable sacred cow, and Americans embraced it as a cornerstone of American patriotism without understanding its socialist origin and purpose. It is a false patriotism that is counter to the principles set forth by the founding fathers.

The United States was not founded on the principles of socialism where the state is the final arbiter of all things over the individual. It was not founded on the presumption that once a state joined it was forever forced to stay in that union. Would it surprise you to learn that the New England states almost seceded from the union before the Southern states actually did? And the founding fathers still alive at the time had no issue with this because that was the very founding principles of the union, to begin with. Here is an article concerning this event in our history.

The United States was founded on principles completely opposite of socialism, that the people are the final arbiter of all things over the government. It was founded with the understanding that any state could leave the union voluntarily if circumstances dictated it. This is the complete opposite of indivisible, as Bellamy’s pledge of allegiance would have us believe.

The founding fathers designed the United States to be a federated Union of Sovereign States. A Republic not a Democracy, where the states and the people are sovereign over the federal government except for the few defined powers enumerated in the constitution. It is well documented by the founding fathers in numerous letters and writings that the American Union was voluntary. Had the constitution been proposed to the States on the premise that it created “one nation” that was “indivisible”, not a single State would have ratified it.

Bellamy’s pledge of allegiance rejects every principle upon which the founding fathers constructed the United States, and what America stands for. His pledge was written from a socialist viewpoint that believes “allegiance” to a central State is “patriotic”. You are taught this in state schools. You are taught that to be a true “patriot” you must pledge allegiance to the state without question. This view is the exact antithesis of the American ideal of self-determination and secession. There is nothing “patriotic” about it at all.

If the pledge is so important to Americans that they foam at the mouth when someone doesn’t say it or doesn’t stand for the national anthem, then why don’t they stand in their own living rooms when watching a sporting event and the anthem is played on TV?

History is written by the winners. This is a great tragedy to humanity since it means history is one sided, the truth is lost when you can only see one side of the coin or only hear one side of the story. It should be obvious to almost anyone, but especially parents, that there are always two sides to any story.

A very good example of Americans never getting to hear the rest of the story is the history of the first Thanksgiving in America. Scott Strzelczyk wrote a short article about this on his blog. Would it change your perspective about that first Thanksgiving to know that the Indians had to save the colonists because of food shortages? Bad luck and bad weather contributed to poor food crops for the colonists. However, another major contributing factor was that they practiced socialism. It almost killed them all, if not for the Indians bailing them out. Thankfully they learned from their mistake and corrected the problem by jettisoning socialism. Here is an excerpt of Scott’s article of William Bradford’s, governor of Plymouth Colony, own journal entry’s concerning this historic event.

“All profits and benefits that are got by trade, working, fishing, or any other means of any person or persons, remaine still in the commone stock until the division… That all such persons as are of this colonie, are to have their meate, drink, apparel, and all the provisions out of the common stock and goods of the said collonie.

For this comunitie was found to be much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the yong-men that were most able and fitte for labour and servise did repine that they should spend their time and streingth to worke for other mens wives and children, with out any recompence.

After two years of insufficient harvests, Bradford and others reconsidered the socialist system practiced within Plymouth Colony. The Governor and his advisors implemented a plan where each colonist had their own land and was responsible for working the land. Most importantly, every family kept what they produced for themselves. Bradford wrote in his journal:

So they begane to thinke how they might rasie as much torne (corn) as they could, and obtaine a beter crope then they had done, that they might not still languish in miserie… And so assigned to every family a parcell of land, according to the proportion of their number for that end, only for present use and ranged all boys and youth under some familie. This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more torne was planted then other waise would have bene by any means the Govr or any other could use, and saved him a great deall of trouble, and gave farr better contente. The women now wente willingly into the feild, and tooke their little-ons with them to set torne, which before would aledg weaknes, and inabilitie; whom to have compelled would have bene thought great tiranie and oppression.

By this time harvest was come, and in stead of famine, now God gave them plenty, and the face of things was changed, to the rejoysing of the harts of many, for which they blessed God. And the effect of their particular planting was well scene, for all had, one way and other, pretty well to bring the year aboute, and some of the abler sorte and more industrious had to spare and sell to others, so as any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.”

Americans have been under internal attack from progressives for almost as long as the United States has existed. Every time they succeeded in pushing America into a war, it grew the government beyond what the founding fathers deemed appropriate. Late in Jefferson’s life, he was greatly troubled by how much the federal government had already grown just in his lifetime, which was minuscule by today’s monstrosity. After any war, America was supposed to stand down from a war footing and reduce the military and the government back to prewar conditions and size. America did that to an extent but after each major war the idea of downsizing the military and the government grew less popular as the progressives gained more and more political capital through successful indoctrination of the people. Certain agencies, powers, programs and departments simply did not go away after a war, like they should have and no one contested this.

While I understand the spirit in which Tobi Keith intended his patriotic songs, he is just as much a victim of this progressive indoctrination as the rest of us. This particular part of “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue” is especially poignant…

“`Cause we`ll put a boot in your ass, It`s the American way”

Actually Tobi, no it’s not.

Putting a boot in someone’s ass if we are attacked and simply defending ourselves is one thing. Marching around the world and invading other countries is another thing entirely. That would make us despotic tyrants forcing our will on the rest of the world, no better than any of histories other evil empires.

This goes hand in hand with another tactic the progressives have used to great effect; accusing Americans of being “Isolationists” by not getting involved in the conflicts between other nations, because it “defends” our freedom. This incredibly damaging concept has been pushed by far too many presidents and politicians. America has never practiced isolationism. The founding fathers intended for us to trade fairly with other countries but to stay out of their conflicts. The rest of the world has the right of self-determination without interference from us. This is not isolationism; it is simply minding our own business and being a good neighbor. There has always been very brisk trade between the United States and the rest of the world. Isolationists don’t do this.

The progressives have falsely exaggerated the American ideal of self-determination on the global stage as being isolationism. This is a purposeful perversion of America’s foreign policies to push progressive statism onto Americans and the rest of the world. This has had incredibly tragic consequences for Americans and people around the world for a very long time. The founding fathers sacrificed everything to be free of other nations determining our fate. Why then did we throw that hard-won freedom away and commit the greatest of hypocrisies by becoming the very thing we claim to stand against? We demanded the freedom of self-determination from the rest of the world, then turned around and demanded the rest of the world surrender their self-determination to us, or else. This is cognitive dissonance of the highest order. The great burning light of freedom that was such a beacon of hope for the rest of the world has been subverted and turned into a raging inferno of destruction. It is not “The American Way” to run around the world killing people and destroying things because we think we are defending our freedom.

The reason Americans believe fighting with the rest of the world is defending our freedoms is because the final victory of progressive statists over the United States occurred at the beginning of World War Two. This is when the United States succumbed to the constant internal pressure that the progressives were applying against us. It was a profound and deeply damaging event that forever altered the course of the United States. It is a testament to just how well that progressive victory was in that almost no American even realizes it even happened.

This is illuminated by the fact that America has been in a state of constant warfare in foreign lands ever since 1941. The founding principles say absolutely nothing about America being the world’s policeman. Taking on responsibility for the rest of the world’s fate, wrongly, is in contravention of the founding principles. Perpetual warfare was known to be detrimental as far back as 2,500 years ago when SunTzu said,

“There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.”

War is the most horrific thing that humans inflict upon themselves. No one wants to avoid war more than those who have to fight it. The cost in lives is catastrophic, even well after the war is over. It is a great tragedy that there are so many Veterans who have returned home from the latest wars America has fought, only to commit suicide because of the overwhelming pressure that fighting a war puts on them. If you truly want to stop this tragedy, then stop sending Americans to fight immoral, and unjust wars to begin with. You can save American lives by not sending them to hell in the name of a mistaken concept that we are somehow defending our freedom by doing so.

Yes, America was once great. What Old Glory stands for was once great. But that greatness has been hijacked and subverted for nefarious purposes. We are indoctrinated to never question what progressives dictate as “American” and “Patriotic”. The progressive cancer that has festered within us for so long has succeeded in seducing Americans into forgetting what it actually means to be an American. It is beyond criminal. However, the true crime here is the runaway government we have today was self-inflicted. We the people created the monstrosity of a government that we have. As my father likes to say, “People get the government they deserve”.

Here are two letters from Abraham Lincoln exemplifying the point I am trying to make. Please consider them carefully and think about the America we now have in comparison to his words.

Lincoln’s Jan. 27. 1838 address to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, IL, entitled “The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions:

“At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

Letter from Lincoln to (Col.) William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864.

“It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

The irony of Lincoln saying these things is lost on most Americans since they are so heavily indoctrinated by the government into blindly worshiping him as a hero. Most Americans never look further at Lincoln to uncover his criminal hypocrisy. He was neither the great emancipator nor the savior of the union. He was a tyrant and a thug. His hypocrisy is staggering. The following excerpt is from his speech in the house of representatives on January 12th, 1848.

“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right—a right which, we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.”

Lincoln believed in the founding principle of secession as he stated above. Even to the point of giving his blessing for West Virginia to secede from Virginia and become its own state. So why did he then initiate the most catastrophic war ever to be fought on American soil by forcing the southern states to stay in the union against their will?

So why did he then initiate the most catastrophic war ever to be fought on American soil by forcing the southern states to stay in the union against their will? Like anything else, just follow the money. Lincoln was faced with losing federal power and money if he allowed that many states to leave the union.

Lincoln’s hypocrisy had a tremendously horrible impact on America. He obliterated the voluntary American Union that the founding fathers created and he is responsible for the greatest loss of American lives in our entire history. Lincoln shredded the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and forced onto Americans the start of the progressive monstrosity of a government that we suffer under today. The reason the progressive government indoctrinates us into blind hero worship of Lincoln is because he is their governments founding father. Lincoln was the first progressive president who paved the way for all the rest such as Wilson, both Roosevelts and other progressive “Imperial” presidents.

The ultimate sacrifice by so many Americans for so long has been in vain. It has been for a morally bankrupted government abusing the powers that the people gave them. It should be highly illuminating just how far down the rabbit hole we have gone if our own government has labeled those who believe in Jeffersonian ideals, the very same ideals that America was founded on, as terrorists! Instead of celebrating and learning from the founding fathers, we are now being told they were terrorists! How in the world did we reach this point?

Practically everyone reading this article is on the following list of potential terrorists according to the U.S. government.

We swore an oath to the Constitution and to the people of the United States. We did not swear that oath to the morally corrupt politicians who have hijacked our government. We join and swear our very lives to the ideals that the founding fathers set forth. We believe in those ideals so deeply that we volunteer to stand between our countrymen and those who would take our freedoms and liberties. We volunteer to defend our freedom and liberty, with our very lives if need be.

…to defend our freedom and liberty

Defend, not attack. Everyone has the right to defend themselves from attack. No one has the right to attack other people.

It took me a great deal of time to realize that my time in the Navy was only the beginning. The founding fathers won the war to secure our freedom and liberty. The fight to maintain it however never ends. It is a fight of words, knowledge, and truth for the hearts and minds of the people. This fight can be fought by all Americans, not just we Veterans. However, I do feel that as Veterans we must lead our fellow Americans in that fight. We swore an oath to defend the Constitution and the people of the United States. That oath is the manifestation of what we feel deep down in our souls as a call to duty that we must answer. There is nothing that absolves us of that oath once our active duty time is over. We can only absolve ourselves of that oath; no one else can do it.

Unfortunately, once we have done our duty and leave active service, there is no one waiting to explain to us that the fight will never be over. We understand this deep down or we would absolve ourselves of our oath right there and then when we leave active duty. But we don’t absolve oursleves of that oath, do we? Our time as a young sheepdog is over but there is still a lifetime of service for the older more experienced sheepdog as well. We must never stop educating ourselves and then pass on that knowledge and truth to the next generation. This is just as an important duty as actively serving. It is critical that our true history and founding principles are not lost. It is our duty to protect these things as well.

Unfortunately, there is a bad habit that a lot of Veterans and those serving are guilty of. I too was guilty of this. We swear our oath to the Constitution, but we never actually read it. Have you actually read it, all of it? How about the Declaration of Independence? If we are going to swear such a deeply personal oath to documents enshrining our countries founding principles, then shouldn’t we at least read them? I know our oath is to the Constitution, but I include the Declaration of Indepence in my oath. Because it, more than the Constitution, enshrines our founding principles. If our oath means so much shouldn’t we know everything that we can possibly know about there origins and purpose? Shouldn’t we know about the men who created them and their intentions for them? Shouldn’t we read their own words and truly understand what they meant and were trying to do? How can we not know these things if our oath means so much to us?

We consider ourselves the sheepdogs and our American countrymen are the sheep whom we protect. But every sheepdog has a master too. There is someone who handles and directs the sheepdog. What happens when the handler becomes corrupted? What happens when the sheep elect a corrupt handler, and then the handler abuses their position of authority and uses the power of the sheepdog for evil purposes? What happens when the handler directs the sheepdog to attack the sheep? What happens when the handler becomes the wolf? What happens when you are forced to choose between the clueless sheep we are tasked to protect and the wolf who has become our handler because of the clueless sheep? I believe this qualifies as one of the “domestic enemies” who we swore to protect against. While taking up the weapons of war is for the young sheepdog, the more experienced sheepdog must teach the young sheepdog who the correct domestic enemy is when the handler becomes the wolf. It is a duty that we experienced sheepdogs have failed.

One of the reasons we experienced sheepdogs have failed in this duty is because there is no one waiting outside when we become a Veteran to give us the intel. In the military having the most up to date intel possible is critical to a successful op. I don’t have to tell you guys this. In the military we have people gathering and providing us with that critical intel. However, once we are back in the civilian world we do not have an intel department gathering it for us. No one is pointing at the bad guys for us. We have to figure this out on our own. Most of us struggle with this and easily fall for distractions, agendas, misinformation, incomplete information and outright propaganda. It’s hard to figure out what is truth and what is fluff and distractions or outright lies. It takes a lot of work on your part to sift through all the chaff to come up with a little bit of wheat. This, unfortunately, stops many Veterans from continuing to look for the truth and gathering their own intel. It’s a lot of work and very frustrating and most give up, if they ever started at all. I know, because I was guilty of the very same thing. Thankfully I had the great fortune of meeting some incredible people involved in the fight for liberty here in America who provided me with the intel I needed. You will find a lot of it at the end of this series of articles. They are all very good places to start.

So I implore you my fellow Veterans, and those actively serving, to use your training and discipline to defend our fellow Americans who have been under attack by domestic enemies for over 150 years. Use your passion to serve, your training and your discipline to educate yourself about our true history and who the real enemy is. The tactics that Sun Tzu wrote about over 2,500 years ago have been used against us for a very long time. The following tactic is so effective and profound that he spoke of it numerous times in “The Art of War”. It has been used against us with devastating effect.

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

“Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”

“The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.”

“To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”

“Ultimate excellence lies not in winning every battle, but in defeating the enemy without ever fighting.”

“To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”

We need to counter this and wage the same kind of fight in return. We must change the minds of our fellow Americans, or we are all lost. Lincoln said it, as well as others throughout history. A country usually falls from the enemy within, not from the external one. The reason countries fall to an external enemy is because the internal enemy already gutted them and destroyed them from within. We are in the last stages of that internal war and we are losing badly. The American people have never needed those willing to defend them more than now. There are a growing number of Veterans already engaged with our internal enemies, please join us, we desperately need the backup.

The moment you switch from serving on active duty to being a Veteran, your status in the eyes of the government switches as well. You go from defending Americans as a sheepdog to being considered a potential terrorist. If you don’t believe me; check out number 59 on the list I linked in part two about 72 types of potential terrorists in government documents. You can access it here also. If this doesn’t motivate you, I don’t know what will.

“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure.”~Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith. Paris France, Nov. 13. 1787.

“There are roads which must not be followed, armies which must not be attacked, towns which must not be besieged, positions which must not be contested, commands of the sovereign which must not be obeyed.” ~ Sun Tzu

We are not the world’s sheepdogs; it is not our duty to protect sheep around the world. We are American sheepdogs; our duty is to protect American sheep only. We will always be sheepdogs, but let’s make sure we are protecting the right sheep, serving the right handler, and fighting the right wolf. The sacrifices of our brothers and sisters in arms will truly be in vain if we do nothing less.

The following excerpt is from John F. McManus’ article “A Republic, if You Can Keep It” published November 6th, 2000.

[The deliberations of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were held in strict secrecy. Consequently, anxious citizens gathered outside Independence Hall when the proceedings ended in order to learn what had been produced behind closed doors. The answer was provided immediately. A Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

This exchange was recorded by Constitution signer James McHenry in a diary entry that was later reproduced in the 1906 American Historical Review. Yet in more recent years, Franklin has occasionally been misquoted as having said, “A democracy, if you can keep it.” The NRA’s Charleton Heston quoted Franklin this way, for example, in a CBS 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace that was aired on December 20, 1998.

This misquote is a serious one, since the difference between a democracy and a republic is not merely a question of semantics but is fundamental. The word “republic” comes from the Latin res publica — which means simply “the public thing(s),” or more simply “the law(s).” “Democracy,” on the other hand, is derived from the Greek words demos and kratein, which translates to “the people to rule.” Democracy, therefore, has always been synonymous with majority rule. The Founding Fathers supported the view that (in the words of the Declaration of Independence) “Men … are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” They recognized that such rights should not be violated by an unrestrained majority any more than they should be violated by an unrestrained king or monarch. In fact, they recognized that majority rule would quickly degenerate into mobocracy and then into tyranny. They had studied the history of both the Greek democracies and the Roman republic. They had a clear understanding of the relative freedom and stability that had characterized the latter, and of the strife and turmoil — quickly followed by despotism — that had characterized the former. In drafting the Constitution, they created a government of law and not of men, a republic and not a democracy.]

The founding fathers designed the flow of political power in the American political structure to go from “We the People” up through our elected officials to the president. It is not the other way around as they have hoodwinked you to believe. Our entire government operates at our discretion, not theirs. We elected them, they work for us. We do not work for them. The government does not earn its own money, it takes it from us. It is our money they are abusing and throwing down the drain, not theirs. We the people are the brake on this runaway train we call the U.S. government. We just need to apply that brake.

With that in mind, I will begin to wrap this up with another set of questions. Why do you willingly accept the government’s version of our history and the truth without question? What’s on the flip side of that coin you were forced to buy from the state? Why do you willingly recite a socialist pledge designed to indoctrinate you into believing the government is sovereign over you and to push socialism onto Americans under the guise of “Patriotism”? Why are you doing Francis Bellamy’s socialist work for him? Why do you send your loved ones to be human cannon fodder for a government that only desires power over you and cares nothing for the cost of human capital to get it? Why are you allowing out of control politicians to get away with making the ultimate sacrifice by your loved ones to be in vain?

Why? How can you remotely justify that what America has become, is what it means to be an American?

Politicians have a simple tool to nullify a policy they don’t like; they simply do not allocate any funds for it. We the people can do the same thing to the entire government. Simply stop allocating human capital to the government. Stop voting for any of them. Imagine what would happen if every single voter wrote in “No Confidence” at election time. (I know, that’s a pipe dream, but if you’re going to dream, dream big.) Stop working for the government. Don’t look for a government job. Don’t join the military. Our planes and tanks and ships cannot murder people in faraway lands and destroy their countries infrastructure if there are no people to run them. There is a great difference between defending ourselves with our military and using that military as a force of oppression around the world. Having approximately 800 military bases around the world isn’t defending our freedom, its empire building. Simply google this subject and start reading, it should open your eyes just a bit. As The Forgotten Men say, “DC will not fix DC”.

I get it, we as Americans want to serve our country. We want to feel like we are defending our freedoms and liberties. The lure of patriotism, especially for the lofty ideals that the United States was founded on, is very hard to resist. There is a great difference though in pledging patriotism to what this country was founded on and what it has become today. True American Patriotism belongs solely to the principles set forth by the founding fathers, not to the progressive socialist monstrosity America has become.

If you really want to “make America great again”, then stop sending your loved ones to be slaughtered for morally bankrupted ideals. Stop funding the deceiver’s agenda’s in DC with the human capital they need. Stop throwing away your very lives to feed a bunch of megalomaniac’s addiction to power. You can start to reverse the damage done and begin to bring back the founding principles by rejecting Bellamy’s socialist pledge and the false patriotism that it represents. I took the liberty of re-writing Bellamy’s pledge of allegiance to remove the glaring hypocrisy and restore the ideals that the founding fathers put forth. I call it “The American Pledge”. Understand that the founding fathers were not in favor of pledges and oaths, but if you feel that you must, then say this in place of Bellamy’s socialist propaganda.

“I pledge allegiance to the American ideal of self-determination, and to the inalienable rights for which it stands, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, with opportunity and freedom for all.”

You will be pledging to the founding principles without the hypocrisy. You will also avoid the controversy that not saying it causes among the vast majority of Americans who are still plugged into the matrix. Be patriotic for the right reasons. The founding fathers sacrificed everything so that we may be free. It is every generation’s duty to that sacrifice to be the keepers and stewards of their founding ideals. It is also our duty to pass it on to our children so that future Americans can also be free.

“But freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it and then hand it to them with the well-thought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don’t do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.” ~ Ronald Reagan March 30th, 1961.

True freedom and liberty require a great deal of personal responsibility, a lifelong commitment to self-education, a copious amount of critical thinking, and a willingness to participate far more in the sociopolitical/economic process than just voting.

The greater the freedom and liberty, the greater mankind can become. It is only through the freedom and liberty to act that innovation, invention, and creativity can survive and thrive.

Second, only to our very lives, freedom and liberty is the most precious and costly gift we will ever have the great fortune to possess.

Something this valuable requires continuous hard work and sacrifice, because freedom has never been free. If you truly want it, you have to work hard for it.

Every single day.

Stop being distracted by the woman in the red dress and unplug yourself from the matrix with the following works.

The Tenth Amendment Center (They have been fighting for years to restore political power back to the people where the founding fathers intended it. It is precisely what the Tenth Amendment is all about.)